Karen LeVert

www.filcsikphoto.com

Karen LeVert is currently a Venture Partner with Pappas Capital. She has a long history of further developing early stage technologies from university research labs and launching them into the commercial marketplace. These commercialization efforts led to spin-off companies in optoelectronics, medical devices, and agriculture via Southeast TechInventures, Inc. (STI) and Ag TechInventures, LLC (AgTI) – innovation labs she co-founded. Ms. LeVert’s business experience encompasses both corporate and entrepreneurial worlds with over twenty-five years of successful leadership experience in executive management, start-ups, and technology commercialization. Karen started her career at a Fortune-500 insurance company holding positions of increasing responsibility from computer programmer, to controller, to general manager of a 500-person Property & Casualty service center. Before founding the innovation labs, her first entrepreneurial venture was launching a franchise bioremediation company that she later sold. Her next entrepreneurial venture was co-founding a Silicon Valley based software company.

Ms. LeVert earned an MBA from the University of Dayton and an Information Technology undergraduate degree from Eastern Michigan University (while receiving All-Academic honors captaining her Division I basketball team).

Along with her professional duties she serves as a Board member for several entities: North Carolina Biotechnology Center; Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina; North Carolina School of Science and Math; NC IDEA Foundation; and LCBA Life Insurance Company.